When Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce announced their engagement this summer, they broke the news (and the internet) with an intimate photoshoot – including a tantalising close-up of Swift’s new engagement ring.
Created by Kindred Lubeck of Artifex Fine Jewelry in New York, the Georgian-style jewel featured an old mine-cut diamond in a soft champagne shade, which fit perfectly with Swift’s romantic personal style.
Just two months earlier, at the wedding of Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sanchez, Kim Kardashian accessorised her vintage Versace gown with high jewellery from Moussaieff, featuring a sumputous array of yellow-brown and orange-brown diamonds. And this was after stars such as Anok Yai and Timothee Chalamet had already posed up a storm on the 2025 Oscars red carpet in diamond pieces from canary to sepia in tone.
A sign, if any were needed, that 2025 is officially the year of the brown diamond.
Not that these gemstones were ever truly off the radar. Ranging from champagne through to beige, toffee and whisky, earthier-coloured diamonds have been a part of a jeweller’s palette for decades, providing more discreet type of sparkle than their white, or fancy pink and blue relatives. What’s suddenly changed is that they’ve gone from being a bit-player to the headlining star in many precious jewellery collections.
“We’ve definitely seen a rise in interest in champagne and cognac diamonds over the last couple of years,” says British fine jeweller Rachel Boston, who has launched a new line of engagement rings called ‘In Motion’ that features several striking champagne and pale brown stones. “What I love about brown diamonds is their depth and complexity. Each has its own subtle character. They bring warmth and nuance that you don’t get from a white diamond,” she notes.
It’s a sentiment echoed by New York diamond specialist Jade Trau, who normally specialises in white diamonds but has increasingly felt herself drawn to deeper-coloured stones. “A few months ago, I was working on some one-of-a-kind pieces with one of my suppliers, who suggested looking at some brown diamonds, [and] this time, inspiration really struck. For me, as a designer, it’s exciting to work with colour since I rarely get the chance. I especially love the look of brown diamonds in yellow gold,” she says, of a pair of brown diamond necklaces she has just completed.
For Los Angeles jeweller Lauren Harwell Godfrey, who recently crafted a champagne and brown ‘toi et moi‘ ring for the rapper Doja Cat, these stones certainly deserve to be amongst a designer’s ‘first pick’. “They still deliver that unmistakable sparkle and brilliance of a diamond, but feel immediately natural and a little mysterious, which I love,” she explains. “They bring a depth and grounded quality to jewellery that is different than white diamonds, and I find they resonate with people who love and appreciate natural diamonds and are looking for something more unusual.”
The timing couldn’t be more perfect, then, for De Beers to launch its biggest marketing campaign in a decade, which highlights the beauty of what it calls ‘desert diamonds’. Its emotive and story-telling focus reinforces the connection between these naturally-derived stones and the landscapes that yield them, much like its innovative ‘A Diamond Is Forever’ campaign created a link between solitaire diamonds and loving commitment back in the 1940s.
At the same time, the American fine jeweller Le Vian is currently celebrating 25 years of its ‘Chocolate Diamonds’ campaign, a term it trademarked in 2000 to successfully reframe brown diamonds as something luxurious and covetable.
“This is about much more than people simply buying brown diamonds for trendy reasons,” says the London designer Ananya Malhotra, who is renowned for her exuberant use of coloured gemstones (indeed, Emily Blunt recently wore a pair of Ananya’s brown diamond earrings to the premiere of her latest film, The Smashing Machine). “Our desire for more personality and nuance in our jewellery, as in other areas of our lives, is absolutely key here.”
“There’s a growing appetite for diamonds that feel more unique, and brown diamonds capture that beautifully,” agrees Rachel Boston. “I think it reflects a wider cultural shift towards individuality and beauty with character. As perfect white lab-grown diamonds become more commonplace, there’s a counter-desire for rarity, authenticity, and the beauty of something the earth created over billions of years.”
With so many things going for them right now, it seems like brown or ‘desert’ diamonds are finally getting their moment in the sun.
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